by Tawni O'Dell
She was brought back one night when I was hanging out with some teammates at the Rathskeller during my last month before leaving for Bears spring training. It was a loud, crowded, rowdy bar, and there, like everywhere we went on Penn State’s campus, we were treated like gods and paid for nothing.
I was sitting at the end of the bar on a stool, with a girl on my lap who was giving me a hand job. I was trying to convince her to get down on the floor and give me a blow job. She wasn’t drunk enough yet and kept giggling and saying, “Let’s go somewhere private,” and I kept telling her I could get any woman to give me one in private but if she did it in the bar, she’d be special.
A buddy called out to me. I looked in his direction and saw him waving a hand above the sea of people as he made his way toward me.
“Hey, Z,” he called again. “You’re from that little shithole town, Coal Run, right? You guys are all over the fucking news tonight. Some redneck beat his wife to death with a baseball bat.”
He pointed behind him at the TV hanging above the bar. I couldn’t hear anything, but I immediately recognized my hometown behind the reporter.
It was spring, and the countryside surrounding State College was a vista of rolling hills and green velvet forests and a soft turquoise sky that looked rubbed on. But a hundred miles west, the sky was the color of old bones and the trees hadn’t bloomed yet. The bare, gray maples and elms behind Coal Run were topped with tight red buds. From a distance they tinged the hillsides a sore dark pink.
The reporter was standing in front of a park where I had played hundreds of times as a kid. The grass was three feet tall now. The picnic benches were overturned. The rusted, outdated gray metal playground equipment looked like torture devices compared to the bright plastic padded jumbles of tubes and suspension bridges in the backyards around here.
Fifty yards beyond it all, in the midst of a strip-mining desert, loomed a colossal surface-mining shovel as tall as a twenty-story building, its monstrous mouth poised inside the TV screen above the reporter’s head, looking ready to bite it off.
The reporter’s lips moved silently. Behind him was a tarnished brass plaque embedded in a concrete stump. I had run my fingers over the raised lettering so many times as a kid that I knew it by touch as well as by sight. I closed my eyes in the din of the bar and tried to push aside the fog in my brain brought about by beer, and pot, and a girl’s hand working diligently inside my pants until I finally felt the words tingle my fingertips like a blind man reading Braille: THIS PARK DONATED BY THE J&P COAL COMPANY.
I got up from my stool, knocking the girl onto the floor, and began walking toward the TV as the image flashed to a little white house with a birdbath in the front yard and a doe lawn ornament standing guard over a fawn.
More flashes. More images. State-police and sheriff’s-department vehicles parked all over the road. An ambulance with strobing lights. The body being removed from the little white house. A shot of the interior with an ominously large bloodstain on the carpet.
Sheriff Jack brushing off reporters. Much younger than he is now, but the face already beginning to sag, the carefully groomed hair already beginning to gray, the eyes already receding into a calm, dark indifference most people will choose to see as wisdom.
I plowed my way through the crowd of people and came to rest directly beneath the TV set as the screen showed a shell-shocked three-year-old boy being carried out the door over a deputy’s shoulder, eyes like the blackened windows of a fire-ravaged building, desperately sucking his thumb.
I knew the boy. I had seen him once, walking down a street in Centresburg holding his mom’s hand. I was afraid she might remember me, so I turned down a different street.
The memory changes suddenly, viciously. I’m no longer standing in the bar watching the events unfold on TV. I’m there. I’m here. I can feel the spring chill that I missed when I first moved to Florida. Now my body has adapted to all those years of heat, and I can never get warm.
The air is misty but country-pure. It smells like earth and trees. The hills rise up behind the house in gray and purple and pink, all the colors of a bruise.
They are mountains, but the word seems too impressive for them now. They’re no longer jagged or spectacular, although they were in their youth. The word “foothills” seems demeaning, implying they are merely part of something bigger, a servant to the larger mountains beyond them.
I don’t know what to call them. My mind can’t grapple with simple ideas. I look down and see my hands covered in blood. My boots and the cuffs of my jeans are spattered with it. My varsity jacket is soaked.
The police have gone, but they left a body behind lying on the cold ground.
I start to walk toward her. As I approach, I see another man coming from the opposite direction. I’m in Coal Run, but he’s an ocean and several continents away, walking across what remains of his family’s farm.
The land beneath his feet is barren and broken into cold, hard brown pieces. The house behind him has been burned to the ground. The barn has been spared but stripped of anything useful and emptied of everything edible. He steps over the clumsily slaughtered carcasses of the few cows and pigs the family owned and stops a few feet away from the body.
He’s terrified to look at it too closely for fear it may be one of his younger sisters. He already knows they’re dead, but he was hoping they had escaped the rape and necrophilia.
It’s impossible to know who did it: the Germans, the Soviets, his own countrymen turned savage by starvation and fear. He doesn’t know who to hate anymore, which is as crippling as not knowing who to love. He crosses himself three times and kneels.
It isn’t his sister. He looks up and sees me and motions for me to join him. I walk over and look down.
It’s Crystal, splayed out white and naked on the bare ground, looking exactly the way she did the day I laid her out on my sweatshirt in the woods and fucked her. Her body is like a child’s: undefined hips, breasts the shape and size of peach halves. The tiny, tarnished cage filled with dim, colorful stones hangs around her throat.
Even in death, her eyes show trust. She was frightened and unsure when I seduced her, but she believed in me. She believed all the garbage I told her. When I pushed inside her, she felt love, while I only felt pussy.
The man stares up at me from where he kneels next to her body. I know him, but we have never met.
“Did you do this?” my young father asks me.
I jerk awake with my heart thudding loudly in my chest. I’m not sure where I am. I look around to get my bearings.
I’m in my truck. I never left Safe Haven’s parking lot. I’ve been covered up with a blanket. My mother’s doing. My keys are missing from my pocket. Also her doing. They’ll be waiting for me at the front desk.
I push up to a sitting position. I’m breathing heavily, and I’m drenched with sweat. I find my bottle. My hand is shaking. I try to remember how much I drank last night before I started on this one. It’s about half empty. I hold it up in the morning light, tilting it this way and that, measuring the contents and gauging the severity of my impending hangover. I can work.
Bodies start to surface in the murk of my mind like they’re bobbing to the top of a black sea. How many was I responsible for yesterday? Crystal? Did I kill Crystal? Did I leave her in her front yard?
I left Jess unconscious in his front yard. I left Rick passed out in his front yard. Did I leave Jolene in her front yard? Yes, but she was standing and she was very conscious. She was upset. Not as much at Jess for hitting his son or Bobbie for protecting him, but more at me for confronting Jess without a gun when he had one.
It takes me a few minutes to be able to separate memories and dreams and reality. A lot of what happened to me yesterday seems like a dream—seeing Val again, seeing Jess again, seeing Chastity for the first time—while the dream feels so real I’m almost afraid to look outside my truck for fear I’ll see a girl’s dead body and the ghostly stare of my twenty-year-old
father.
I’ve never even seen a picture of him at that age, but I know exactly what he looked like. He would have been much thinner than he was when I knew him, almost emaciated from his years of near starvation. His hair would have been raven black, without any of the strands of silver that were beginning to appear the year before he died. His eyes would have been the same sparks of color, their decadent presence unexpected and remarkable in the hard, sober face, like finding a lost diamond ring glittering on the side of the road. The Magadan nakolka of the Stalin crucifix would have been fresh, sharp, and blue.
I make myself get out of the truck. The lot is half full already, but there’s no one around.
I keep a couple clean shirts in the back of my truck for these kinds of mornings along with deodorant and a plastic bag full of Wet-Naps I’ve collected from barbecued-rib nights at the Ponderosa.
I walk over to Safe Haven and retrieve my keys from the receptionist at the front desk. Once I’m back at my truck, I turn on the engine and get the heat working, then strip off my jacket and shirt and walk around to the back of my truck, bare-chested, rubbing my arms in the cold. After a good scrubbing with a Wet-Nap, I pick out the least wrinkled of my shirts: tan with brown-and-gold keystone-shaped patches on the shoulders proclaiming me to be a member of the Laurel County Sheriff ’s Department.
Back inside the truck, I dry-swallow two Vicodin, take my badge out of the glove compartment, pin it to my shirt, and snap my revolver into my belt holster. I’m on my way to see Sheriff Jack.
I make one stop en route. I need real coffee this morning, not the stuff we have at work.
When we were kids, the Valley Dairy only sold ice cream. It was made with fresh milk from a local dairy farm. There were pictures of cows on the walls and gingham curtains on the windows and polished silver milk cans standing in the corners.
The place always seemed to do well, but the farm went under and the family had to sell. The new owners decided to expand it into a restaurant. They bought two deep fryers and a dozen high chairs, ordered some place mats for kids to color on and red plastic plates, put in some booths and had a slick laminated menu made, but kept the barnyard decor.
I survey the breakfast crowd. The waitresses move in and out among the booths and tables with the precision and wiggle of fluorescent-stained microbes on a glass slide. Their uniforms are an alarming orange, the same shade as the cheese in the grilled cheese sandwich pictured in the menus.
Jolene’s working the counter in back. It’s filled with men in all colors of dirty ball caps who work at a plant outside town where they’re shredding old tires to mix into asphalt. The process is supposed to make the blacktop last longer. She’s walking up and down the line with a coffeepot, smiling and making small talk.
She spots me, and the smile disappears. I guess I wasn’t imagining her little lecture last night. It may have been more. It may have been a fight. I may have started it by yelling at her instead of thanking her for saving my life. I’m all for women’s rights and equality in the work-place and all that stuff, but I draw the line at heroic stripping.
I start making my way to the counter. She moves to the end of the line of tire shredders to wait on a new customer. I slow down and come to a stop as she nears him.
It’s Val. There’s no question about it. He looks exactly the same as he did at Zo’s funeral yesterday, right down to the cigarette hanging from one corner of his mouth and Castro’s hat.
Jolene darts a questioning look in my direction. I shrug my shoulders and nod.
“Welcome to the Valley Dairy,” she says to him, sweetly.
He’s staring out the window. He takes his time turning his head toward her, then tilts it back so he can see her from beneath the brim of his cap.
“Have you ever been here before?” she asks him.
“No, but I think I can figure it out,” he replies.
He takes a long drag off his cigarette and studies her as she reaches beneath the counter to get a menu.
“Weren’t you Miss Slag Heap 1982?” he asks her.
She seriously considers his question for a moment. I know she’s wondering if there could have been a local pageant that she missed.
I walk over and sit two tire shredders away from him.
“I was Miss Mountain Laurel,” she replies. “Miss Teen Centresburg, Centresburg’s Junior Miss, Laurel County Fair’s Pine Princess, Miss Bucks County Mall, Miss Centresburg Mall, Miss November in a Keystone Auto Parts calendar, Miss Centresburg Speedway, and Miss Pennsylvania.”
“Jesus,” he says.
“I was also queen of a lot of things. Do you want coffee?”
“Yeah.”
She hands him the menu and slides a cup and saucer in front of him.
“Miss Pennsylvania,” he says thoughtfully, putting his cigarette on the edge of an ashtray. “That’s a big one. You win anything good?”
“A car,” she answers, busily plunking down containers of cream and sugar packets in front of him.
He makes a low whistle.
“What kind?”
“A powder blue Mustang convertible.”
“What else?”
“A mink coat.”
“Real mink?”
“Yes.”
“What else?”
“Let’s see. Five hundred dollars’ worth of Maybelline makeup. Two hundred dollars’ worth of Hawaiian Tropic products. Three Catalina swimsuits. A fourteen-karat gold, handcrafted ‘Miss Pennsylvania’ diamond necklace.”
“Anything else?” he asks, brushing aside all the creams and sugars and reaching for the black coffee.
“A sterling silver, limited-edition Mickey Mouse watch. Oh, and a trip.”
“To where?”
“Las Vegas.”
“What hotel?”
“The Flamingo.”
He takes a long swallow of his coffee, then settles his unsettling gaze on her, watching her with a condescending admiration, as if he finds her stupidity to be an act of bravery.
“Did you get a single prize that wasn’t symbolic of something wrong with this country?” he asks Jolene.
“I got ten pair of shoes.”
He barks a laugh. The tire shredders shift uncomfortably. It doesn’t bother her at all.
“Weren’t you at Zo’s funeral?” she asks him.
“Briefly,” he says.
“How do you know her?”
“How do you know her?”
“My son is her grandson.”
“That would mean you fucked Randy. Was that more or less dehumanizing than being Miss America?”
“I wasn’t Miss America,” she replies angrily. “I was Miss Pennsylvania, and even if I had won, I wouldn’t have been Miss America. I would have been Miss U.S.A.”
He leans across the counter until the brim of his hat almost brushes her chin.
“Why didn’t you win?”
“I was disqualified.”
“No shit. For what?”
“I got pregnant.”
“You were Miss Pennsylvania with your whole perfect little beauty-pageant future in front of you and you got pregnant?”
“I didn’t do it on purpose.”
She truly didn’t believe they would take back her crown. She thought they would excuse the pregnancy because it had been an accident.
“What’s the difference between this and falling down a flight of stairs and breaking my leg?” she argued with the officials when they came to our house for the final confrontation.
He picks up his cigarette and slips it back in his mouth.
“Hell, I’d give two pair of shoes to hear that story.”
The tire shredders begin to shoot dirty looks in his direction. They don’t approve of the way he’s talking to her, but none of them seem anxious to challenge him.
“Do you want to hear our breakfast specials?” she asks.
“I want a burger.”
“At eight in the morning?”
“You got a pro
blem with that?”
She glances behind her at the plates of eggs and pancakes staying warm beneath the orange heat lamps.
“No. Okay, you want a burger. We have—”
“Don’t,” he interrupts her. “Don’t tell me about your Caribbean Burger and your Tom Turkey Burger and your Alaskan Pipeline Burger. I want you to fry the piss out of a ground-beef patty and stick it inside a bun. A plain bun. Not sourdough or whole wheat or fucking poppy seed. I want the kind of bun we serve to our convicts and public-school children.”
“Do you want fries with that?” she asks when he’s finished.
He keeps staring at her for a moment.
“No,” he says. “Forget it.”
He starts to get up from the stool. His movements are awkward and jerky. He’s been without a leg for over thirty years now. I always assumed he would’ve adjusted to it okay. As a kid I pictured him drinking a couple beers and uttering a string of swear words over his misfortune, but that would’ve been the end of it. Val would’ve never felt any self-pity or bitterness. He would’ve conquered the problem. He’d be one of those amputees who could run a marathon on crutches if he wanted to. I imagined it wrong.
He digs in a pocket for some change and puts it on the counter to pay for the coffee, then starts limping past the men seated on the stools. He doesn’t really drag the fake leg; it’s more like the rest of his body coerces it.
He stops when he gets to me.
“So what are you now?” he asks, the cigarette jerking up and down between his lips. “A forest ranger?”
I try to answer him, but no words come.
“He’s a Laurel County deputy,” Jolene answers for me.
“Your mother must be proud,” he says.
He reaches across the counter and takes one of Jolene’s hands in his, turns it over, and lifts it up like he means to kiss her palm, then presses two dimes into it and squeezes her fingers shut around them.
“Are you gonna let that guy talk to your sister like that?” a voice at my side asks me.
